White Denim's Fits

Track List:
1. "Radio Milk How Can You Stand It" - 3:53
2. "All Consolation" - 2:55
3. "Say What You Want" - 2:51
4. "El Hard Attack DCWYW" - 1:58
5. "I Start to Run" - 2:52
6. "Sex Prayer" - 2:04
7. "Mirrored and Reverse" - 3:54
8. "Paint Yourself" - 3:25
9. "I'd Have It Just the Way We Were" - 2:19
10. "Everybody Somebody" - 2:53
11. "Regina Holding Hands" - 3:29
12. "Syncn" - 4:19

If you read my Thao review, then you know just how unnecessary it is for bands to reinvent themselves between albums. But sometimes I get it. The thing about debut albums is they are essentially best of compilations, especially for a band like White Denim who had a live following before they ever released an album. In my career as a songwriter, I’ve written about five songs that I really like. So, in a couple of years I might be able to stretch them into an album, but I guarantee that if I released a follow up the next year it would be comparatively awful. Following this purely hypothetical thread of logic, my follow up would likely be entirely different; a reinvention, one might say. So I’m not without empathy for White Denim, the problem is they reinvented themselves as a spazz-rock jam band. True, this is not a total transformation from last year’s Exposion, but it’s enough of a digression to raise questions.

Last year, I was just about ready to call White Denim the Spoon of jam bands. There was nothing that spectacular or innovative about the music, but the way the album was put together was so effortlessly brilliant. The hooks were captivating and, ranging from Black Crowesian rockers to sounding more like an Alien 8 band, they flowed between pop, psychedelic blues rock and jam breaks so fluidly that the genius of it all was easy to take for granted. This is why people describe Spoon albums as “growers.” After about a dozen long plays, Spoon is your favorite band, and you’re not even sure how it happened. The noteworthy difference is that Spoon has been relatively quietly making the best rock albums out there for over a decade. This is where the comparison falls apart, and why I held back with such a ringing endorsement. Two albums in and White Denim is seemingly as played out as, well, white denim.

Fits isn’t hopeless, just a little hapless. At least the album title is right on the money. This album is all over the place, sampling and combining genres, but hardly lingering in one place long enough to establish a sense of purpose. It’s a spazz. Exposion was certainly eclectic, but the difference is in the execution. The excitement of the former was in the intricate layering of jangly riffs like Bloc Party or Foals and the constant fluctuation or quick change beats like Built to Spill or Olivia Tremor Control. Eclectic is good, but it requires attention to detail. The first four tracks have about enough solid ideas to make one or two really good tracks. “Radio Milk How Can You Stand It” has a great bass line but the aimless guitars fail to capitalize. The track just isn’t captivating until nearly three minutes in when the song is on its way out. “All Consolation” has the same problem burying what could be compelling drum breaks in whammy laden, derivative noise rock. “El Hard Attack” is the first track that really stands out, but that’s mostly due to its anomalous sound. The metal riffing with a distinctively tex-mex flair is fairly incendiary, but again the band fails to develop it far enough to be anything much more than shock value. Exposion had “WDA” and “Migration Wind” which both managed to be effective without lyrics, so I know they’re capable of far more musical intrigue. Even the tracks on Fits that have lyrics are a far cry from former glory. “Paint Yourself” comes the closest to bridging the old and new tracks, but even this one feels a little like a Creedence tune.

Exposion had a clear identity despite drawing from a large pool of influences. On Fits, White Denim has lost the control that made it work so naturally just a year ago. Fits is pulled in too many different directions to purvey the sort of lackadaisical swagger of a latter day jam band. The overly ambitious “Regina Holding Hands” resonates equally of John Legend and Michael McDonald, and this sort of confusion is exemplary of the main problem of Fits; none of it fits. Fits works, but maybe Overexposed would have been a little more accurate. I hold White Denim to a higher standard than most after Exposion, but they set the bar themselves. The moral of the story is, it really is okay to take two years between albums.